“He is the Savior of the Body.”

In a passage many consider to be among the most instructive in the Bible on marriage, we find that Christ is “the Savior of the body.”  The early portion of the verse relevant to this topic says, “Christ is head of the church.”  At first it seems that Paul has his metaphors mixed up: a head goes with a body (as he wrote in Colossians 1:18), and the church needs a savior.  Obviously his mixture implies that both are interchangeable, and that both positions — head and savior — are interrelated in purpose and function for the body/church.  Being the head likewise requires one to be the body’s savior, and to be the savior demands the headship of that savior.  If the head does not save the body, who or what will?

But what exactly does it mean to be the savior of the body?  Understanding this is critically important, as we mentioned earlier, because of the implications for marriage, which is foundational for all of society.  Whatever “savior of the body” means, it is instructional for both husbands and their wives, the “saviors” and the “saved” respectively.  But more generally it is also important for all of us as his people to apprehend and appreciate this foundational aspect of who he is.

The word savior comes from the Greek word, soter, meaning “savior, deliverer, preserver.”  It implies that the individual spoken of actually has the capacity to fully save the object he wants to save.  This is a huge capacity Christ has, as 1 John 4:14 says, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.”  This speaks volumes of who he is.  If Jesus had been only a man, then as a man his death would have provided salvation for at most only one man or woman.  But as the God-man, his death could apply to others without limitation.  And that is what the Bible consistently says.

Titus tells us something else about our Savior.  In 1:3 we find that God is our savior, while in verse 4 we see Jesus described as the same.  This means one of two things.  Either we have a contradiction, which we know is not possible in Scripture, or we have a clear suggestion that both God and Christ are therefore equal in their membership in the godhead.  Thus they would also be equal in their respective efforts to save us, but not necessarily identical in their saving roles.  The Father’s role was to work out the plan of salvation and to send the Son to actually fulfill that plan, as John said earlier.  Christ’s role was to do the work on earth up to its completion.  We see the accomplishment of God’s plan by Christ’s last cry from the cross, “It is finished!” (John 19:30).  So both have their parts in our salvation, and thus both act as saviors.

But what of “the body,” the object of their effort?  The body could be speaking of our physical bodies as in Philippians 3:20-21, where Paul speaks of implications of the resurrection.  But in Ephesians the context is marriage, and the body is clearly described as all members of the church — his body (Colossians 1:18), the object of his love.  While Christ is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2), it is only made effective to individuals by personal faith in Christ (Romans 4:1-8).  That is how all of us joined his church.  When anyone begins his/her relationship with God through Christ, it is Christ himself who saves, delivers and preserves us.  He has replaced hell with heaven as our destination, removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), and changed the ruin of death into a door of hope.  As the hymnwriter said, “Hallelujah!  What a Savior!”

For marriage, then, the picture is that savior-husbands are to imitate Jesus in this saving role, doing everything within his power to save, preserve, defend, protect and provide for his wife who is an extension of “his own body” (v. 29).  And the saved-wife as man’s equal is to show due respect and honor to her husband and follow him as the church follows Christ.  Together they save/preserve/defend society by having and raising a “godly offspring” (Malachi 2:15), one main reason why God “hates divorce” (v. 16).

If you are married, does your marriage reflect the Savior’s relationship with the Church?  If you are single, are you aligning your ideas of marriage according to God’s plan?  Regardless of your gender, we all can be like Christ as being a preserver and savior of others.  Does your life characterize this quality?